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Adding Machines

Ten Keys & Fewer

From the mid-19th century, a few adding machines were built with an array of nine or ten keys for entering digits. The clockmaker Jean-Baptiste Schwilgué patented such a machine in France in 1844. Schilt had worked for Schwilgué before building his machine. He showed the instrument at the Crystal Palace exhibit, a World’s Fair held in London in 1851. Schilt declined to make copies of this machine, and had little immediate influence on the design of adding machines. In the course of the 19th century, inventors like David Carroll of Pennsylvania and the French-born priest Michael Bouchet of Louisville, Kentucky, also proposed adding machines with a limited number of keys. Bouchet seems to have found a handful of customers. Ten-key adding machines devised by rabbi Judah Levin of Detroit and Frank S. Baldwin of New Jersey also found no wide market.

During the 1890s, Albert C. Ludlum of Brooklyn and then Denver, and William W. Hopkins of St. Louis took out patents for a ten-key adding machine that would print results. From 1903 it was manufactured in St. Louis as the Standard adding machine. The Standard was, the first widely distributed ten-key adding machine on which the numbers printed were visible.

The success of the Standard inspired imitators. Inventors at Burroughs Adding Machine Company designed a ten-key adding machine, although it was not marketed. Sydney B. Austin of Baltimore prepared a similar machine. William Hopkins’s younger brother, machinist Hubert Hopkins, patented his own version of a ten-key adding machine. After complex business dealings, including intervention from other adding machine manufacturers, James L. Dalton acquired exclusive rights to manufacture machines under the Hopkins patents. From 1903, a firm soon known as the Dalton Adding Machine Company made the machine in Missouri and then Ohio, until it was acquired by Remington Rand in 1927. Remington Rand would also acquire rights to a lighter ten-key machine, built on patents of Thomas Mehan and originally sold as the Brennan.

Slightly later than Hopkins, Osker Sundstrand of Illinois introduced an adding machine that featured digit keys arranged in a 3 x 3, with a zero bar underneath. This became standard, and would be used not only on adding machines, but on later electronic calculators. In 1926, the Sundstrand Adding Machine Company was acquired by Elliott Fisher, a firm known for its bookkeeping machines. This company, in turn, merged with the Underwood Typewriter Company, which sold the Underwood Sundstrand adding machine for many years. The Italian firm of Olivetti purchased a controlling share of Underwood Corporation in 1959, and soon placed a redesigned ten-key adding machine on the market.

By the mid-20th century, ten-key adding machines took a growing share of the market. Victor Adding Machine Company of Chicago, which had initially sold full-keyboard machines, introduced a ten-key machine in 1939. After World War II, Victor would acquire one of the first manufacturers of full-keyboard machines, Felt & Tarrant. The venerable Burroughs Adding Machine Company also introduced a ten-key machine, patterned on the British Summit. A few ten-key machines were imported from Europe and Japan. Plastic machines with fewer keys and limited capabilities were made in Japan and Hong Kong.

This is one of the oldest surviving key-driven adding machines. Victor Schilt, a little-known clock maker from the Swiss canton of Solothurn, sent it for exhibition at the first of the great world’s fairs, the Crystal Palace Great Exhibition held in London in 1851. The entry received an honorable mention, and Schilt reportedly received an order for 100 machines, which he declined to fill.

The front, top and mechanism of the machine are steel, and the case is wood. The plate and zeroing knobs on the top and the nine digit keys across the front are made of brass. The machine adds numbers up to 299. Only one-digit numbers may be entered. The result is visible in a window in the plate. The plate is marked: V. Schilt (/) Mechaniker in Solothurn.

The Schilt machine closely resembles an adding machine patented in France in 1844 and sold by Jean-Baptiste Schwilgué and his son Charles. Schilt had worked for the elder Schwilgué before building his machine. Schilt’s machine was part of the collection of Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company, and was given to the Smithsonian by the successor to that firm, Victor Comptometer Corporation.

This is the U.S. Patent Office model for a nine-key non-printing adding machine. The small machine has a wooden case with nine metal keys with wooden key covers, arranged in two rows. There are three wooden numeral wheels visible through a window at the back top. The machine apparently is designed to add single digits up to 999. No numbers are visible on the key tops. The keys in each row presently appear to operate [no effect] 4 6 8 (/) [no effect] 2 3 5 7. The patent drawing indicates that the keys are arranged 2 4 6 8 (/) 4 5 5 7 9. The effect of the keys is determined by adjusting screws on the underside of the machine. The four registering wheels to the left have on their left side a ring of ten equidistant pins that are used in carrying. There is a lever at the top of the machine that can be adjusted to release the number wheels so that they can be turned back to zero using a button on the left. The device was patented by David Carroll of Spring Creek, Pennsylvania.

References:

David Carroll, “Improvement in Adding Machines,” U.S. Patent #176,833, May 2, 1876.

This model of a ten-key non-printing manually operated adding machine is an open wooden box that contains a metal mechanism driven by nine keys along the front. When a key is pushed down, it pushes a lever and ultimately turns gears. The object is a rough model, not a production machine. A loose piece may be part of the machine.

This may be an incomplete model of the adding machine patented by David Marion Rush of Louisburg, Missouri. Rush applied for a patent July 25, 1883 and was granted it January 22, 1884. This model corresponds to the patent description of Rush’s machine as it was used to enter numbers. The mechanism for recording totals, as well as the upper cover of the instrument, is lacking.

David Marion Rush was born in 1849 in Barren County, Kentucky, and moved with his family to Polk County, Missouri, in 1852. He studied in the public schools and then, for three years beginning in 1871, at a private school in Urbana, Missouri. After teaching from 1874 to 1884, he entered the patent rights business. He received two patents of his own, one for a washing machine and the other for an adding machine. From 1886 until at least 1889, he was county collector in Wright County, Missouri.

This is the second form of key-driven adding machine patented by Michael Bouchet (1827-1903), a French-born Catholic priest who came to the United States in 1853 and worked in Louisville, Kentucky, from 1860.

Bouchet was of an inventive turn of mind, devising automatic snakes to frighten his acolytes, and a folding bed and fire escape for his own use. He had considerable responsibility for the financial affairs of his diocese and, according to his biographer, as early as the 1860s invented an adding machine to assist in keeping these accounts. Of these devices, Bouchet patented only later versions of the adding machine, taking out patents in 1882 and in 1885.

His machine was used to add single columns of digits. Depressing a key depressed a lever and raised a curved bar with teeth on the inside of it. The teeth on the bar engaged a toothed pinion at the back of the machine, rotating it forward in proportion to the digit entered. A wheel at the left end of the roller turned forward, recording the entry. A pawl and spring then disengaged the curved bar, preventing the roller and recording bar from turning back again once the key was released. Two additional wheels to the left of the first one were used in carrying to the tens and hundreds places, so that the machine could record totals up to 99. Left of the wheels was a lever-driven tack and pinion zeroing mechanism.

This silver-colored example of Bouchet’s machine has a brass base and nine keys with plastic key covers (two of the key covers are missing), arranged in two rows. It is from the collection of computing devices assembled by Dorr E. Felt in the early 20th century It has serial number 229. Compare to 310230.

This is the second form of the key-driven adding machine patented by Michael Bouchet (1827-1903), a French-born Catholic priest who came to the United states in 1853 and worked in Louisville, Kentucky, from 1860. Bouchet was of an inventive turn of mind, devising automatic snakes to frighten his acolytes, and a folding bed and fire escape for his own use. He had considerable responsibility for the financial affairs of his diocese and, according to his biographer, as early as the 1860s invented an adding machine to assist in keeping these accounts. Of these devices, Bouchet patented only later versions of the adding machine, taking out patents in 1882 and in 1885.

The machine added single columns of digits. Depressing a key depressed a lever and raised a curved bar with teeth on the inside of it. The teeth on the bar engaged a toothed pinion at the back of the machine, rotating it forward in proportion to the digit entered. A wheel at the left end of the roller turned forward, recording the entry. A pawl and spring then disengaged the curved bar, preventing the roller and recording bar from turning back again once the key was released. Two additional wheels to the left of the first one were used in carrying to the tens and hundreds places, so that the machine could record totals up to 99. Left of the wheels was a lever-driven tack and pinion zeroing mechanism.

This example of the machine has a tin cover and a brass base and nine key stems arranged in two rows (the keys are missing). It was the gift of Mrs. Joseph S. McCoy, widow of Joseph S. McCoy, Actuary of the U.S. Treasury from 1889 until his death in 1931. McCoy and his predecessor, Ezekial Brown Elliott, were most open to inventions in adding machines. According to one of McCoy’s colleagues, the Bouchet machine was left in the office by the inventor in the year 1890 or thereabouts to be tried out. Bouchet did not return.

This model of a nine-key non-printing adding machine has a wooden base, plastic sides, and a metal mechanism and keys. A bar across the back is moved in differing amounts according to the key pressed (the nine keys across the front are depressed in slots of varying length and hence rotate the bar varying amounts). The bar, in turn, rotates a numeral wheel with the numbers 0 to 99 on it. There is a one-digit carry. Keys are marked with the digits from 1 to 9 (the 5 key is missing). There is no 0 key.

The arrangement of the result wheels is somewhat similar to that on the ten-key machine invented by Peter Lindholm and patented in 1886. However, the number of keys and arrangement of the keyboard is different. The plastic sides also mitigate against a 19th century origin. No patent model was made for this patent, although there were production models.

This nine-key manual non-printing adding machine has an iron case painted black, and nine white number keys arranged in two rows. It adds one digit at a time, up to and including 500. The digits of the result appear in three windows on the face of the machine, which is in the shape of an alarm clock. A zeroing knob is in the center of this face, and the result windows are above the knob. There is no maker’s mark on the machine.

The machine is identified as a Centigraph Adder in the accession file, although it differs from other machines with this name in having nine rather than five keys, in having a case, in the placement of the result windows, and in having paper and plastic rather than plastic key covers. Moreover it has a mechanical carry, unlike the Centigraph described in the patent. Two screws on back allow one to remove front cover. The mechanism appears to be steel, and quite different from A.E.Shattuck’s 1891 patent for the Centigraph.

In the late 19th century, Wiliam Seward Burroughs of St. Louis pioneered in the introduction of key-set printing adding machines, designed especially to assist banks in keeping track of accounts. The Burroughs Registering Accountant found a considerable market. In August of 1902, calculating machine inventor Frank S. Baldwin proposed this form of a key-set, printing adding machine. It has only one set of keys (the 3 key cover is missing), arranged in the order of a modern telephone touch pad.

A small, unmarked key is to the left of, and above, the “1” key. To the right of the "3" key stem is a threaded metal protrusion. Above the keys is a semicylindrical carriage with a row of nine numeral wheels that indicate the total. At the base of the carriage is a saw toothed bar. A metal arrow points up from the bar as a place marker. A triangular protrusion from the machine surface holds the bar. At the end of the carriage is a screw, perhaps for zeroing. A small lever attached to the bottom left of the carriage may release it to move left or right.

Behind the carriage is a printing mechanism that prints up to nine digits. It is driven by a crank on the right. Reels for the paper tape are behind the mechanism. The wooden knob on the crank folds inward so that the lid of the mahogany box closes. A loose metal handle fits into a hole in the right side of the machine.

A mark on the case of the machine reads: 27-86. No serial number found.

This machine is from the collection of L. Leland Locke, and was once at the Museums of the Peaceful Arts in New York City.

This ten-key non-printing manually operated adding machine has a steel and iron frame. The ten digit keys are arranged in two columns on the left side. Two rows of nine keys across the top indicate the place number of the digit entered. The front row is for addition and the other is for subtraction. To enter a number, both the digit key and the place key were depressed. Numbers through 9,999,999 can be indicated. The metal keys have plastic and paper key tops. The space under the keyboard is covered with green velvet. The result is indicated on a row of red number wheels below these two rows of keys. The machine is stored in a small black suitcase covered with leather, lined with cloth, and provided with a metal handle on top.

Compare to U.S. patent 815,542, dated March 20, 1906. Other Levin patents are 706,000, July 29, 1902,and 727,392, May 5, 1903.

Judah Levin, the inventor of this adding machine, was an Orthodox rabbi in Detroit.

This ten-key printing adding machine has a cast-iron frame painted black, with ten black plastic numeral keys across the front (two of these keys are missing) and nine red and white plastic unmarked order keys behind these. There is a large metal key on the left side, and a key stem (without cover) below. The paper tape holder is behind the keys (there is no paper tape), the printing mechanism behind it, and the adding mechanism behind this. Missing front and two sides, crank, three key covers, ribbon. The machine has serial number 6044. It was transferred to the Smithsonian from the U.S. Department of Commerce.